In today’s video-first era, there is actually a very simple way to evaluate whether you really like a movie, and that is to see if you have the urge to buy the original book after watching the movie. I found out about this little step in college. After reading the version of "No One Survives" by Shanghai Mousetrap Drama Studio, I immediately found the original novel to read. A reasoning story that already knows the process and the ending, but because of one interpretation, I have the desire to spend two hours reading the novel again seriously - the necessary condition for this reverse flow is not only a good story, but also a video of the story. success.
If you want to talk about "annihilation", the film that cannot be avoided is not even "Ex Machina", another work of the director himself, but "Arrival". Although in my opinion, "Arrival" is a film with great changes compared to the original, and it has the integrity of the film industry standard, but one of the reasons why I feel the two are similar is that after watching "Arrival" , I immediately read the original novel.
The same is true of "annihilation". Although the director himself shot the film without reading the original, I immediately placed an order for the original novel. The fascinatingness of this story makes me want to use my own imagination to find the possibility of its figuration—a moment that best understands "There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people's eyes". Excellent movies act as guides at this moment. The creators use their own understanding to tell the audience that there is such a story in this world, and good stories will attract more people at this moment. These people are like me, want to Witness the story itself, take it for yourself.
Annihilation is about the ultimate romance in the universe. Similar to "Story of Your Life" (i.e. the original short story "Arrival"), these alien beings/genes arrive with no purpose.
Among all the inferences about extraterrestrial intelligence, what I still can't understand is that "because there is no breathing condition to have oxygen-containing air, some planets cannot have higher organisms".
Scientific analysis aside, I would like to see this inference as a little bit of human narcissism and arrogance. Considering the survival factor of human beings as the survival factor of all creatures in the universe makes me unable to accept any conclusion that "there are no other intelligent creatures in the universe".
What "annihilation" and "Story of Your Life" tell is the process of questioning and destroying this little bit of human narcissism and arrogance.
Enter Shimmer's team of female scientists, each with their own hearts and wounds, leading the audience into a dizzying world. In this story, it doesn't even matter what happened or what happened to people, what matters is that the world of shimmer grows eerily, arbitrarily, without cause or destination.
If seeing the different kinds of flowers on the same vine after the reflection and fusion of genes, the deer with branches on the antlers, and the various fungi blooming on the wall are not enough shocking and amazing, then look at By the time Kane's teammates grow into a gorgeous tree of creatures after being disemboweled, I really want to stand up and applaud every creator who participated in the design of this scene.
Turning terror into beauty and erasing the meaning of death from human cognition - this is the little bit of indifference the universe cares about the little earth.
Then part of the "soul" of the teammates being eaten by the black bear (I always feel that it is not only genes and cells that are copied and reflected) is pasted on the black bear. This extremely bizarre scene is reasonable under the setting of the story. Since the copied clip happened to be the teammate's cry for help before his death, the half-rotten black bear came to find the target to attack, but the human screams of despair came out with its mouth wide open. The effect of the fusion of the two generated under random circumstances just happens to satisfy the deepest fears of mankind. What a satire of arrogant human beings that shimmer and the entire universe have no purpose and yet make humans awed.
One of the teammates gave up resisting the surging of the compliant cells and turned into plants, and the sacrificial skeleton array near the lighthouse further contrasted the unintentional nature of the universe with the actions of human beings. Between resistance and submission, the shimmer does not give the intruder a choice, but lays it out so that you can see me clearly. Self-confidence and arrogance stand at opposite ends. Behind arrogance is a deep unease. Before silence, we can only be silent and blow out the candle in the dark.
I believe the passage after entering the lighthouse is perhaps the most widely criticised. However, I really like the way this part is handled - no matter how it is described in the original book, Alex Garland is like shimmer's "accomplice", creating a Almost ridiculous lighthouse center. Whether it's the uncomfortable replicas or the foamy barrier of the shimmer's edge, the almost hilarious insincerity they embody just happens to be a footnote to the heart of the story— —As for the core of the story, it probably wants to tell us how casual the universe is.
In another film "Ex Machina" directed by Alex Garland, it tells a story that is inexplicably similar to "annihilation" - AI uses people's empathy and mutual suspicion weaknesses to successfully escape from life, in private Behind the preference, sympathy, pity, and lust are meticulous algorithms. This is another kind of indifference.
You see, the universe doesn't care, and technology doesn't care either. Human beings really take themselves too seriously. Some human arrogance and some self-consciousness make humans lose in a mess in front of opponents who have no intention of participating in the war.
This kind of failure with a little stupidity, a little fooling of human beings, belongs to the romance of the universe and all things.
To be honest, in front of a movie like "annihilation", who doesn't want the outside world to be shimmered in the moment he walks out of the cinema?
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